The Gervais Principle by the Ribbonfarm guy gets into this: powertalk vs. babytalk

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

the Cornell article is basically just empirical testing of these concepts.

Also summarised in https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of...

this reads like an AI clickbait.

it does make Rao's original article a little easier to digest but it was already pretty tight through the first 3-4 parts.